and i wonder, i do

Trying like a nursery rhyme sung by a soprano, a stick man by an old master. mixturing excellence with incompetence, with the good marks. The good points, exploited.

two sides

I made a painting a while back, around about the time of 'Pleasure Hands', which is the last female portrait i did (a woman in green). I don't think it's very good, but technically i suppose it shows a sort of skillfulness in depicting a specific scene. A house, some trees. An insignificant scene, bestowed with colour and fit in to a structured composition. I tried anyway.

I do quite like it. The colours are nice, the application of paint works for me. But that's all it seems to be about. It's kind of banal, possibly hinting at something, i mean if you focus on something long enough to paint it it's ultimately going to be suspected that it 'means' something. Even if it really doesn't.

Today i made my second Feather painting. I like it very much, though the picture i took of it does not do it justice, it does not reveal the many different shifts of colour, the two different yellows in the background, the much worked into feather itself. It works, it's an ordinary, unimportant feather, also bestowed with some sort of meaning, epicness, feeling, spirituality, while hopefully retaining that humble origin. The yellow, i enjoy, i enjoy painting patterns that are seemingly abstract, this was based on the pattern of stitching on the canvas, the different yellows were responses to the dappled light of the sun filtered through some leaves playing over the whole scene. Though you'd never know it to look at it. But hopefully there is enough there to see, without prompts from me.

What do i want?

I must know what i want because i'm quick to decide on what i don't want. There is a guide, even if i don't know what it is.

I want a place of my own.

I want the freedom to travel.

I want the money to live comfortably, and free from money oriented worries.

I want good friendships.

I want a loving, kind and humour-filled relationship.

I want to be able to work in art, film, animation... and be appreciated for that work.

hmmm.. for all my pretentious posing, and faux teen angst, my desires are remarkably ordinary and simple.

But then paint applied to a canvas is quite a simple act isn't it, while at the same time being a very difficult task, to do it well anyway.

Game theory

It's tiring weaving a pattern of nothingness.

Punctuating that nothingness with a certain peculiar language.

Which attempts to inspire in you, your own stories.

Yet they are based within me, within my past, within something which is both completely separate from you, in time, space and culture.

And yet which is ultimately a slice of life which we all have experienced, and contained in our memory.

Sweet Little Reminder

of how, as it's been so long, you forget how good things can be. The reminder is sweeter still when been forgotten for a long time. When you're in forced contentment with less than ideal circumstances. It only takes a word, a sentence from a stranger or a look or a song, and things conspire to jog your memory. Kinda kick starts everything, which is a blessing if it's your emotions, a pain in the arse if it's your imagination.

it's a pleasure

I'm not a Hedonist, well, maybe a long term hedonist, rather than seeking short term gratification (which doesn't really work), so maybe i am.. no. Maybe i'm more in line with Epicurus (he was in that book on philosophy i read, he wasn't a materialist though, as many people claim, wrongly. He didn't believe we should be gluttonous, he was more a believer in basic needs to fulfill pleasure - friendship, shelter, food. Simple pleasures).

ANyway...

what i meant to say was about painting. Because painting is pleasurable, i mean maybe this applies to all art forms, but paint, especially oil, with it's slippery, buttery feel, it's pleasurable to paint with that, or its pleasurable to paint with pleasure in mind. Not that that's all painting is, or that's all a painter's life should be - pleasure. The opposite in fact, for me definitely, roughness of life, turmoil, depression, anxiety, apathy, unhappiness, troubles, all conspire to make paint pleasurable, if painting is your goal. Not that i advocate chasing after these negatives in order to paint better, though maybe i did that when i was younger. Wanting to paint better, being inspired by good ideas, having painting tied up with your life, that's as good a way as any. Making painting your centre, not your centre of focus, but what you focus with.

All these painters i love, from the past, Boucher, Fragonard, Rowlandson, they are not 'dry' painters, they have flair and style, and the tip of their brush or pen is filled with excitement, and jitters, and flowing, it glows. Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Baselitz, Van Gogh, Richter, Cecily Brown, Chardin, Daumier... And the content? nowadays it's been pulled apart for so long that it's a struggle just to not worry about content. Just to paint what's around you, to be comfortable. That's what it is, 90% of life is rhetoric, and that goes for the arguments you have with yourself.. that's how you win them. Well, not win, but a convincing argument is enough. Especially in matters of art, which are removed from life, they do not require as much reason as life does.

Art, i may be wrong in saying (but i convinced myself) that Wittgenstein did for philosophy what Duchamp did for art, not that their intentions were the same, but that the effect they had was that art began to turn in on itself (oh this has happened before, and began in art probably, in earnest, with Monet and Impressionism.) When art started to be less about life, and more about art. And when philosophy became less about life, and more about philosophy. When it all became a bit insular and elite. Funny how, during these 'elite' years, art has been more accessible to the public via free galleries and tv programmes than at any other time.

Actually it was pretty rather pointless to say, that last paragraph, wasn't it? (Is my bumbling manner offensive? i didn't think it could be, but i don't seem to put people at ease in telephone conversations, even when i'm being really really nice..)

Pleasure, it's in writing too. But it's not the pleasure of a cake or a lazy day in front of the television. Its the pleasure of a beer on the top of a mountain. Or a kiss after a years separation.

noth

Wake up each morning with a 'complete' feeling of emptiness. I wiki'd it.. and found the exact things i felt - "boredom, social alienation and apathy".

I went on to read - "travellers and artists are often intrigued by and attracted to vast empty spaces, such as open deserts, barren wastelands or salt flats, and the open sea"

i can't find a reason to carry on. It not being the first time is a glimmer maybe, but that it keeps recurring hints at something that probably needs checking.